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The left hand is the same 4 bars repeated for the whole song. Master these 4 bars and you own the entire left hand — and it’s built from 4 chords you already know. This page is the foundation; everything else stands on it.
Do this
- Find your 4 chords. In the bass clef, look at the lowest note at the start of bars 1, 2, 3, 4. Those roots are E, G, B, D → the chords Em, G, Bm, D. Pencil the chord name above each bar. (Confirm the order matches your sheet.)
- Play each chord as a solid block first — all three notes at once, left hand, fingers 5–3–1 (pinky on the bottom). Get the shape under your hand. See the diagrams.
- Now roll it (arpeggio) the way the music does: bottom note up through the chord, smooth even eighth-notes. Read the exact note order off your sheet — it just walks through these same chord notes.
- Metronome ~50. Play the 4-bar loop. Get your eyes off your hands as soon as you can.
- The automaticity test: loop it while saying the chord names out loud (“Em… G… Bm… D…”). If you can talk and keep playing, the left hand is going automatic. That — not speed — is the whole goal of this page.
Your four chords (left hand, fingers 5–3–1)
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Today’s tempo:
50→
60→
70→
faster = weekend
What good looks like
5 clean loops in a row, not looking at your hands, chord names out loud. Tick one box per clean loop:
If it’s not working
Don’t speed up — slow down. A wrong note played fast gets memorised wrong. Play it slow enough to be perfect, and it will grow on its own.
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Learn each melody on its own, and lock its rhythm by counting out loud. The rhythm — not the notes — is what makes hands-together hard later. Over-learn it now and Step 3 gets much easier.
Do this
- Two tunes to learn: the A-theme (starts bar 5) and the B-theme (starts bar 13 — mostly long held notes, so it’s easier). Right hand only.
- Chunk the A-theme into single bars. Learn bar 5. Then play 5–6. Then 5–7. Add one bar at a time (“chaining”) — never the whole thing at once.
- Count out loud while you play: “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &.” Notice the melody does not start on beat 1 — there’s a short rest, then it enters just after. Feeling that “late” entry now is what saves you later.
- Right-hand fingering: thumb = 1 (your lowest finger here), pinky = 5. Keep the hand relaxed and curved — no tension.
- Bring each tune up to a comfortable speed, hands separate. Comfortable, not fast.
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Mark where the melody lands (fill in from your sheet)
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For bar 5: pencil an orange dot on each beat/“&” where a right-hand note starts. You’ll use this exact map in Step 3.
What good looks like
You can play the A-theme and the B-theme without hunting for notes, counting the rhythm out loud the whole way through.
If it’s not working
Sing the melody first, then find it on the keys. Your ear leads your hand — if you can’t sing it, you can’t play it smoothly yet.
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This is the step that fixes your blocker. Hands-together isn’t “do two things at once.” It’s knowing which right-hand note lands at the same moment as which left-hand note. Find those moments — the sync points — and the rest falls into place. Work tiny: just bars 5–6.
Do this
- Find the sync points. Play bars 5–6 very slowly and watch: each time a right-hand note sounds, which left-hand note is happening at that exact instant? Mark it on the grid below.
- Block them. For each sync point, press the left-hand note and its matching right-hand note together, as one chord. Ignore the in-between left-hand notes for now. This teaches your hands the alignment.
- Expand, very slow (metronome ~40). Now play the full left-hand arpeggio and drop each right-hand note onto its sync point. Say it out loud: “… right-hand note — now.”
- Loop 2 bars. It will feel clumsy and slow. That clumsiness IS the learning — don’t rush it away. Raise the tempo only after 3 clean reps.
- Keep the left hand running like a motor. The right hand simply drops onto it.
The sync-point grid
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Example only — orange = right hand, blue = the steady left-hand eighths. Dashed lines = “play these together.” Now fill the blank one below with your bar 5.
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Your bar 5: pencil orange dots where the right hand enters, then draw a line down to the left-hand note underneath.
Expect this — it’s the key diagnostic
If your left hand falls apart the second the right hand joins, the left hand wasn’t automatic enough yet. Go back to left-hand-only for 2 minutes (Step 1), then try again. This is normal. It’s information, not failure.
What good looks like
Bars 5–8, hands together, slow but correct, with the left hand staying steady underneath. Slow and correct is a complete win today.
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Get the B-theme working hands-together too, then practise by mixing instead of repeating — and drill the joins between sections, because that’s where playing falls apart.
Do this
- B-theme hands-together first (bars 13–16). It’s the easy one — long held right-hand notes over the same left-hand loop. Quick confidence win, so start here.
- Now MIX it up. Instead of drilling one bit over and over, rotate randomly: A-theme → B-theme → intro (LH only) → back to A. Pull a “card” at random. It feels messier — that’s the point: it builds memory that lasts, not memory that vanishes overnight.
- Drill the joins. A join is just “last beat of one bar + first beat of the next.” Isolate each as its own 2-bar chunk: 4→5 (LH-only into the melody entry), 8→9 (A repeats), 12→13 (A into B).
Map of the piece (▲ = the joins to drill)
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Shuffle these — random order, not blocked
A-theme (HT)
B-theme (HT)
Intro (LH only)
Join 4→5
Join 8→9
Join 12→13
Why random beats repeating: alternating tasks forces more effortful processing each restart, which builds far more durable retention. [sourced: Carter & Grahn 2016, Frontiers in Psychology]
What good looks like
You can play A and B hands-together, and cross the joins without fully stopping.
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Today’s finish line: one slow, continuous, hands-together pass. Slow and unbroken beats fast and stop-start. That is the entire win for Friday — nothing more is needed.
Do this
- Continuity pass at ~50–60. Play the whole thing hands-together. Rule: do not stop to fix mistakes. If you stumble, keep the left hand going and rejoin with the right. Flow beats perfection today.
- Find your 2 worst spots. Isolate each (back to the chunk method, 3–4 min each), then drop it straight back into the piece.
- Finish on a win. Play one clean, slightly-slower full pass so the last thing you play is a success — that’s what your brain keeps overnight.
The full lap (play it through, start to finish)
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Tempo ladder:
5060
→ today stop here →
708090100
The weekend plan
FRI — today
Slow + solid + continuous. Hands together, unbroken, even if slow. Done = win.
SAT
Same, but climb the tempo ladder toward 100. Smooth the joins.
SUN
Polish: dynamics (soft/loud), let it breathe, play it for someone.
Remember tonight
Sleep does the real locking-in. Tomorrow’s first run will feel smoother than tonight’s last — for free, no extra practice. So end clean and let it rest. [sourced: Walker & Stickgold, sleep-dependent motor-memory consolidation]
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